by
Chaplain Steve SullivanThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

09:20 AM, Friday, March 21 2014 | 2669 views | 0 | 57 | |

I was recently struck by something during the Sochi Olympics. For two weeks, we were saturated with information about the Olympic athletes competing in Sochi.

Every time I clicked on Yahoo, the top four stories were about Olympic events or athletes. The NBC evening news was broadcast from Sochi every night. Even many of the local news channels had reporters on-location at the Olympics.

Our nation and media were focused on the U.S. athletes. We all watched the Olympics as they had elaborate opening and closing ceremonies. We knew all about the athletes — their families, their backgrounds, their struggles. Occasionally, we would see the entire home town of an athlete gathered together in a restaurant, cheering on their local athlete as they competed.

As a VA chaplain, I thought to myself, “what a contrast this is to those who are serving us overseas or who have returned from combat? What if we knew or cared as much about those who represent us IN BATTLE as we do those who represent us IN A BOBSLED? What if our communities cheered and supported our returning Veterans in the same way?”

I guess I wasn’t alone in my thought. I saw a few days later that one of the U.S. hockey players thought about this contrast, too. He said, “They are calling us heroes. Heroes wear camo. I don’t wear camo.”

In Paul’s writing, we are reminded that we as a church are all one body with many members, and that we are all important (I Corinthians 12). The same is true for our communities and returning warriors. They come from and return to our communities. We are responsible for sending them, and we need to be responsible for making sure they make it all the way home.

We have deployed 2.5 million service members since 9/11. We know that at least 1 in 5 of those returning are suffering from severe symptoms of depression or post traumatic stress disorder PTSD six months after they return home.

May our communities come together as one like the body of Christ. May we treat our returning warriors like we would our own family, or at least support them as much as much as we would an Olympic athlete.